A letter to Papa Elf

Dear Santa,

I have a bone to pick with you. Here we are, Christmas Day -- the first Christmas spent away from our families due to Jacob's unfortunate work schedule -- and you have yet to visit our apartment. Our stockings are limp and lifeless; the only presents under the tree are from my parents and students.

Were you turned off by our lack of chimney? Surely you could have noticed the Welcome mat by our front door hidden under the snow. Did you sense that we didn't have any cookies or milk left out for you? If you had taken the time to look, you would've found a plate of cookies given to us by some neighbors on the kitchen table, buried under the mail. And of course the milk was in the fridge, lest it get warm sitting on the counter.

Did you refuse to come because we don't have any small children? Really, Santa, I didn't think you were an ageist.

You've let us down, but I've decided to extend you the benefit of the doubt. After all, you do have a lot of work to put in for just one night of the year. Stop by our apartment by this Saturday and I won't release the photos I have of you and Mommy another woman kissing under the mistletoe.

Love,
Your friend,
Bring us the presents and no one gets hurt,
Merry Christmas,

Jennifer

The ghost of Christmas (card) past.

Christmas cards have started to arrive in our mailbox, and that means a few things:

1. Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat! And I haven't done any Christmas shopping yet! (And forget holiday baking -- it just isn't going to happen this year. At least, not before Christmas.)

2. I'm feeling a little guilty for not sending Christmas cards. In fact, I have only sent Christmas cards myself twice in my lifetime. Allow me to share.

 This is the picture my next-door neighbors and I (also known as The Eternal Roommates) sent to our parents our freshman year of college. But I'm pretty sure that was when I was in my knockoff Photoshop phase and the picture we sent was actually entirely in orange and red hues, making us look like we were demons or on fire or something. Cheery, eh?

On the back of this Christmas card, we included braggy things about our first semester of college. It was printed on only the highest quality computer paper and mailed off to our parents. I think mine arrived after I had already come home for the break. But it was a big hit.

The following is a picture my sister and I sent out to our parents and I think a few select relatives and roommates.

When we printed it at the BYU Bookstore, we had the option of adding a festive "Merry Christmas!" border. Which we so did. It was basically the best Christmas card of all time, excluding the ones my cousin sends out.

Jacob and I haven't ever sent out Christmas cards. What would we include in our letter? Barring immediate family, who would want a picture of the two of us without any cute kids running around? Especially if the picture looked something like this:

Or this:

Or even this:

Because let's be real, we haven't taken any "normal" or "respectable" photos since our wedding day. Which was almost three years ago exactly (raise the roof for our upcoming anniversary!). So if we were to send out a photo card, those would be our options.

We are so classy.

C is for cookie

I hate grading math homework. Haaaaate it. Which means that I usually put it off until I have three or four day's worth and finally buckle down and check it in one fell swoop. Which takes forever and makes me vow I'll start having the students check their own, until the next day when we just don't have time to go over it in class. And the cycle continues.

Perhaps I'm a bad teacher. Especially as evidenced by my class's average on the math benchmark test they took today. Nothing like grading failed math tests to make me feel like an awesome teacher.

But I digress.

Every now and then I come across something in a student's math homework that makes me smile. Like the student who showed her work on the back of a piece of paper printed from lds.org.  And this multiplication word problem written by one of my students, for instance:

"Mrs. Erickson made cookies. Each batch has 99 cookies. She makes 99 batches. How many cookies did Mrs. Erickson bake in all? Answer: 9,801."

I hope I'm not planning on keeping all those cookies for myself! Also, can you imagine making that many cookies in one sitting? I think I might perish from exhaustion.

Here's a word problem of my own creation:

"Mrs. Erickson has 26 students in her class. She has 7 more math and language arts assignments to grade. Not all of her students have turned in their assignments on time. She also has a smattering of late work she needs to grade. How many assignments does she need to correct, and how long will it take?"

They grow up so fast.

When I was hired in September, one of the reasons I was relieved it was fourth grade and not fifth (not that fifth was even an option, but still), was that fifth grade students receive the "maturation" lessons. I thought I dodged a bullet on that one.

I thought wrong.

A few examples:

1. My class went to the library today and sat on the rug so the librarian could read a story to them. When she concluded, she excused the girls to get books, and then she excused the boys. Well, a few of my precious students stayed on the carpet, insisting that they were "men." This is not the first time they have done this. When I told them to get their shelf markers because, yes, they are still boys, one of them related the following to me: "My doctor said I'm going through puberty, so I'm becoming a man."

2. Perhaps the puberty thing shouldn't have been such a surprise, because I do notice a distinct, pungent odor in the classroom after recess or PE when the class has been running around. Would it be distasteful to recommend my students wear deodorant if they notice they have a funky smell emitting from their armpits? Yes? Darn.

3. Some notes passed between two students were brought to my attention today. They detailed, among other inappropriate-pet-names-for-fourth-grade, plans to secretly hold hands in science if they were watching slides and the lights were off. The female suspect in question has also written the story of her love life and all of the boys she has crushes on in the class. (I pinky promise I found this on accident. I wasn't snooping on purpose!)

Heaven help me.

I'm going to stare into your soul.

Eighty percent of the work week, I wear knee-high nylons to accompany my footwear. (The other 20 percent of the time is when we get to wear jeans on Friday and thus can wear socks with sneakers.)

Jacob never seems to know what to call these nylons. No, I take that back -- he calls them a variety of names.

For example, "those gross brown things." As in, "eww, take those gross brown things off of the couch - slash - out of my face." (I have no idea why he might have a problem with me leaving them on the couch or floor or anywhere besides my feet or the laundry hamper.)

My latest favorite moniker is "leeches." Over the weekend we did laundry, and Jacob helped put away his clothes. I meandered into the bedroom as he was doing so.

"You have too many leeches!" he accused.

"Leeches?" I queried.

"You had like 80 of them stuck to your pajamas, sucking the soul out of them."

Well, then. Apparently I have soul-sucking hosiery. Who knew?

Oh stuff and fluff

 Instead of grading or lesson planning or any number of other productive things I could have done, I spent part of my weekend making this not-quite-masterpiece:

I just hope I don't regret it tomorrow.

100 points to Gryffindor

Jacob was concerned that the post I wrote about him not wanting to get me a glass of water made him look like a jerk. (Which was not my intent.) So, in order to clear up any misconceptions, allow me to share the following:

This last week had been a fairly long one at school. I had to be evaluated by my principal for the first time on Wednesday, so I stressed about preparing and delivering that lesson. On Thursday, my students were acting up even more than usual, so I came home exhausted and discouraged. On top of that, I'm trying to get ready for report cards for Parent Teacher Conferences and have been a little overwhelmed about getting everything done for that.

So when I came home from work and running errands on Friday at 5 pm and still had the prospect of making chicken noodle soup for our family's traditional Halloween bag dinner, I felt like curling up in a ball and dying a little on the inside.

I trudged into our apartment, the very picture of gloom and despair, and found Jacob wearing his apron, the cookbook on the table, the vegetables peeled and chopped, the chicken cooked and shredded, and the dishes in the process of being washed.

This was the second day in a row that he had anticipated my stress levels and made dinner without any request on my part. Keep in mind that he probably works even harder than I do, commuting an hour each way to school 3 times a week on top of working the graveyard shift.

I married a good man, no doubt.